Today's Opinions

Not long ago, the United States was a world leader in infrastructure investments. Federal and private funding helped even the most remote communities obtain electricity, running water and access to the rest of the world through telecommunications.

However, recent years have not followed the same trend, and too many rural communities have been left behind. The need for improvement is great, especially for rural water and wastewater systems.

To put this in perspective, the American Water Works Association estimates that more than $600 billion is needed over the next 20 years to upgrade our nation’s water and wastewater systems. Unfortunately, many small and rural water systems lack access to affordable financing.

Not long ago, the United States was a world leader in infrastructure investments. Federal and private funding helped even the most remote communities obtain electricity, running water and access to the rest of the world through telecommunications.

However, recent years have not followed the same trend, and too many rural communities have been left behind. The need for improvement is great, especially for rural water and wastewater systems.

To put this in perspective, the American Water Works Association estimates that more than $600 billion is needed over the next 20 years to upgrade our nation’s water and wastewater systems. Unfortunately, many small and rural water systems lack access to affordable financing.

Most of us take for granted that we can wake up each day, get in our car, drive to work, drive home, drive to the grocery store or to a movie, and get wherever we want to go. But for some of us, the time will come when we can no longer drive a car and we must give up the keys.

The loss of a vehicle can often lead to cases of isolation, which causes a decrease in physical activity, and mental engagement. People are no longer able to participate in everyday activities like visiting friends, going to social events or church because they no longer have a way to get there. Individuals can’t rely on friends and family to make up the difference because they have their own lives and schedules.

For these individuals, public transportation will provide a vital role toward keeping older adults connected and engaged in their communities.

The last couple of weeks conservatives have gotten drunk on the idea that the possibility of a blue wave was looking more like a blue puddle because of a tightening of poll numbers in the generic congressional polls. Well this last week has been a conservative hangover, as day after day delivered bad news for the GOP.

More primaries have come and gone, and more moderates and traditional conservatives lost to populists. Here in the DMV, Corey Stewart, a candidate that claimed to be more Trump than Trump and had connections to all the worst actors in Republican politics bested Libertarian state delegate Nick Freitas and Pastor E.W. Jackson, drastically hurting Virginian Republicans down the ballot. Barbara Comstock in Northern Virginia had her congressional seat move from a toss-up to leans Democratic because of the nomination of Stewart.

As the week progressed a reckoning in the youth movement of the party happened, Turning Point USA had several scandals including one of their main spokesperson making awful comments about the #MeToo movement, the leaking of chat logs where leaders of TPUSA were attempting to get their own members to not talk about the scandal, former employees making accusations about faking their numbers, and alleged cover up of misconduct that happened at events.

It’s a human thing, I think, that nearby things and people get less attention. So it was for the Fort Sumner Historic Site/Bosque Redondo Memorial and George Dodge Jr., a Santa Rosa businessman. Then Dodge, a Democrat, became a state representative. With De Baca County, home to the Bosque Redondo Memorial, in his district, Dodge’s perspective changed.

Dodge shared the story on a hot Saturday, June 9, at the memorial, as part of events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the June 1, 1868, signing of the treaty releasing Navajos from the concentration camp (today’s common term), allowing them to go home, and establishing the Navajo Nation.

For the Navajo Nation, 2018 is the Year of the Treaty.

June was full of commemoration events at Window Rock and other locations.

One of three treaty documents is now displayed at the Memorial, which is seven miles southeast of Fort Sumner. It’s a big deal; it’s important.

Navajos came to Bosque Redondo as prisoners of war, rounded up by soldiers led by Col. Kit Carson. Carson also got some of the Mescalero Apache people to Bosque Redondo, though without the scorched earth campaign conducted against the Navajos.

BY ASHA KEDDY
Vice President, Technology, Systems Architecture & Client Group and General Manager of Next Generation and Standards, Intel Corporation

Just six short months ago, I remarked that the finalization of the Non-Standalone 5G New Radio represented “One Small Step for 5G, One Giant Step for Wireless ” – noting that, with the announcement of the common standard, the real innovation was just beginning. Today, I’m excited to say that the industry has not just taken more steps to advance the future of 5G, but has gone from a walk to a jog to a run, and is now in a full-blown sprint to commercialization, as the 3GPP Release 15, Standalone (SA) 5G NR standard is finalized.

Intel has been uniquely positioned at the forefront of these conversations – providing essential technological inputs and leveraging global partnerships to push testing and implementation of standards-based technologies.

We’re also working with operators and manufacturers worldwide, to drive a wholesale transformation of the network infrastructure required to deliver 5G experiences to a flexible, agile and virtualized architecture powered by Intel computing technologies.

The trade war with Canada over steel, aluminum and milk understandably grabs the headlines. But flying under the radar is the battle over Canadian newsprint, a skirmish that’s hurting businesses and costing jobs.

In January, the U.S. Commerce Department, responding to a complaint from a New York private equity firm that bought a Washington state mill, imposed a 6.2 percent tariff on imports of Canadian newsprint, then added another 22 percent in March. And U.S. newspapers, to put it mildly, are suffering mightily.

That’s why a group of newspaper executives will travel to Washington, D.C., this week to try to persuade lawmakers to get the Commerce Department to back off. The tariff already has prompted layoffs – newsprint is typically a newspaper’s biggest operating cost behind labor – and caused some newspapers to reduce their number of pages.

Thousands of U.S. newspaper jobs are hanging in the balance.

The Washington state paper mill employs fewer than 300 people. Like some other recent tariffs, the cure is worse than the disease.

Living in Washington in 2018 has almost felt like living in a book club. The fascination around Donald Trump’s presidency has overtaken the city and has a lot of residents asking how did we get here? From the lines at Starbucks, conversations on the metro, or the halls of George Washington University. There isn’t a place in the DMV where this topic isn’t being discussed. Heck, even on a tour of an apartment I did, I got sucked into a two-hour conversation about Trump just because I discussed what I did for a living. To answer these questions many in the beltway have turned to books, on the Metro, I’d see book covers with titles that attack the president.

The two gossipy books about Trump that I still see on the subway every now and then, and by the cash register at the CVS, are, of course, Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” and James Comey’s “A Higher Loyalty.”

Apart from the Harry Potter books from my childhood and the Bibles in church, I have never seen more people in the wild reading the same book as these two books in the Washington Metro area. Even I bought into the hype, and the Wolff book lives in my kindle to this very day.